By The Leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA) John Steenhuisen visited Thaba Nchu in the Free State on Friday, 12 April 2024, to launch the party’s manifesto in the Free State where he promised that the DA will create jobs.
The Free State is notorious for its high unemployment rate, miss-managed municipalities and corruption. To this, Steenhuisen says his party will rescue the Free State from the ruling party and improve the state of the province by creating jobs and unlocking the provinces economic potential.
As a point of reference, the opposition party Leader said they have created more than 300 000 jobs in the Western Cape, and said they can do the same for the Free State. In the third quarter of 2023, the Free State province was the only province in the country that recorded an increase in unemployment with 1.8%, shedding 3000 jobs and reaching unemployment rate of 38. 5%.
On the side lines, asked on what kind of jobs the DA is going to create. John Steenhuisen told The Business Weekly that, the DA will create permanent sustainable jobs whereby people can afford to buy houses and cars.
“EPWP jobs have their place, but those are not real jobs, those are couple of weeks’ worth of work and then the person is back in the unemployment queue. I’m talking about having EPWP but supplementing them with real jobs, real jobs that will give people security, real jobs that will allow them to buy homes, real jobs that will allow them to pay for services and to improve their lives and make sure that they can build a better life for themselves,” said DA Leader John Steenhuisen.
The Leader said permanent and sustainable jobs are an antidote to poverty and inequality.
To address the issue of service delivery, none-compliance and corruption in municipalities of the Free State, Steenhuisen said the DA will use the provincial and national powers at its disposal provided for in the constitution to address the challenges in the province.
The latest report by Good Governance Africa in its Governance Performance Index South Africa 2024 report showed that out of eight metros in the country, Mangaung Metro in the Free State is the worst and ranked the lowest at number eight. The metro has been under provincial and national administration, but the interventions seemed to be futile.
“All of the interventions done in the Free State were done to settle factional battles of the ANC, not for good governance. What we will do is bring expects, bureaucrats, specialists into places like Mangaung and Matjhabeng, to put them under administration using provincial powers and to focus on getting the municipalities right so that they can deliver services,” said Steenhuisen.
The DA Leader said it is pointless to replace one ANC faction with another hence, when they come in to take over power in the Free State, they will ensure good governance by putting the said municipalities under administration and make sure that they work for the people.
Steenhuisen pointed out that the province is the bread basket of the country; it has huge mineral resources and now of lately natural gas and great people. He said that needs to be leveraged and find markets for the products that the province is producing so that the resources work for the people and people benefit from them.
“There is no use having a wonderful agricultural output if our ports and harbours are not working to get them to the European, America, overseas and Chinese market where we can get good money for it and it makes it viable. It is no use us having minerals and we can’t get them out of the ground in a cost effective way so that they can be used, particularly these new precious metals for batteries, we have to make sure that we create market access for these things so that we can make those asserts work for the people,” he said.
South Africa will be heading to the polls in a few days to cast their vote, more than 300 parties are said to be running for office including independent candidates. Many parties have promised many things to woo the voters; some people have been disappointed by the ruling party. The trust deficit between voters and political parties has depreciated drastically.
To this, John Steenhuisen says people can trust the DA because they are not like any other party, in their manifesto, the DA sets out the problem, puts a solution to the problem and also has a point of reference to show how they are already doing that where they govern.
According to Steenhuisen, they have demonstrated how they have created an economy that grows jobs in the Western Cape, how they are fighting crime by putting law enforcement advancement program officers on the street who are properly trained and equipped to fight crime, how they are ending load-shedding in the Western Cape, how they were able to use an education system to teach young people robotics and coding so that they can find work in the new world and how they made sure that their hospitals are working.
“We use concrete examples, because we getting lots of parties that are coming with long promises in this election, people need to look carefully and say ‘yes I like what you are saying here, but have you done what you said you will do, are you using the solution anywhere’; the DA is the only other party with a track record of provincial government, I think it is a good story to tell and that is the difference, it is better to show people what you are going to do than tell them what you are going to do,” concluded the DA Leader and MP John Steenhuisen.
